AIM/ ESRC Business Engagement Project - Marketing Practice
Project Team
Indicative Management Priorities
From research to date, the following eleven themes have emerged as management priorities in UK marketing practice. If you wish to comment, please contact Richard Adams, or click on the link following the descriptive paragraphs below.
1. Environmental dynamism
2. The need for change in the business model
3. Changing consumer markets
4. Marketing communications and e- marketing
5. Market research/consumer insight
6. Product and service innovation
7. Brand management
8. Marketing metrics
9. Developing a marketing orientation
10. Marketing training and development
11. Corporate Social Responsibility
1. Environmental Dynamism
Marketing and firm performance are very much context dependent. All businesses, regardless of sector, are affected to some degree by the socio/economic, cultural and technological changes in their wider environments. Thus, the first key theme considers issues relating to environmental dynamism, its implications for marketing practice and the need for new organisational and marketing responses.
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How can marketing practitioners understand and develop the capabilities for environmental scanning?
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How can externally-derived information be fed quickly and efficiently into the strategic planning and innovation (new product/service development) processes?
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How can organisations develop the ability to be adaptable and flexible in responding to changes in the environment?
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What are the processes of trend development and how can related knowledge best be utilized?
2. The Need for Change in the Business Model
Reportedly, the issue of the changing marketing environment is so important that it demands responses above and beyond that of the marketing profession and that many of our marketing models and management practices were developed and reflect an industrial age model of value creation. As such, in order to become truly consumer-centric changes are needed at the level of the business model, to which marketers can contribute.
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How can organisations do system innovation at the level of the business model?
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How do customers and companies interact and relate when the customer is no longer a passive recipient of an organisations product/services and marketing communications?
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How can marketers contribute and influence the process of systems innovation?
3. Changing Consumer Markets
Developments in IT have brought with them both opportunities and threats to traditional forms of marketing practice. The ubiquitous nature of the worldwide web has allowed the emergence of the IT-enabled consumer. The Internet opens up business transparency and informs and empowers the consumers in their purchasing decisions. From the marketing perspective, one impact of new technologies has been to permit the customer greater ‘voice', the flow of information from individuals to organisations. This increased flow raises a series of management questions relating to:
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Eliciting the growing range of different forms of inward-bound information from customers and potential customers;
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Capturing and analysing the resulting data;
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Responding and acting on this data;
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Pricing models when firms face near perfect market conditions;
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Understanding what constitutes customer value in order to compete on differentiation as opposed to price;
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Understanding of consumers' motivations for purchasing off and online.
4. Marketing Communications and E-Marketing
The digital environment is opening up the opportunity for new forms of marketing communications.
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What are the implications of both positive and negative web-blogs for brands?
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What are the appropriate metrics for measuring the effectiveness of e-blasts, or e-casts as a promotional tactical marketing tool?
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How can the ‘active' consumer participation in the communications process be encouraged? How might ‘user- generated' content in marketing communications be developed and integrated?
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What is the potential of using online environments such as Second Life for marketing communications?
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What are the opportunities for and effectiveness of new forms of promotional/sponsorship techniques?
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What alternative routes to market are offered by new technologies and their management?
5. Market Research/ Consumer Insight
A common theme is the necessity to develop deeper understanding about the changes in the market place and to develop consumer insight. It was felt that there is a need for marketers to develop a better understanding of their customers. This was emphasised in particular with those organisations dealing with the ‘youth culture'. Marketing managers are often seen as being out of touch with their target market and are often over reliant on market research agencies. In order to do this we need to explore:
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How can direct consumer involvement and interaction in the marketing process be facilitated?
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What is the role of front line staff in service organisations as generators of customer data?
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What role can ethnographically orientated research methodologies play?
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What is the potential role, contribution and effectiveness of web-based research methodologies?
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New technologies enable the capture of large amounts of consumer data, how can this best be managed?
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How can call-centre data best be utilized to add value for consumers?
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How can data be translated into innovation in product and service development?
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How can market research be used strategically to add value within the business rather than in an ad hoc project-by-project mode?
6. Product and Service Innovation
At the organisational level there is still a need to focus on new product and service development from a marketing perspective. In particular, in highly competitive markets, where many consumers are suffering from 'choice fatigue', the issues of:
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What is consumer-relevant innovation in saturated markets, and how can it be achieved?
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How can the voice of the consumer be integrated into the product and service innovation process?
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How can value be co-created with customers in the innovation process?
In FMCG markets, brands do not operate in isolation they are part of a product category.
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How can marketing practitioners better understand product innovation that contributes to growth both in terms of category (e.g. confectionery) and brand (e.g., Kit Kat)?
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How is an innovation pipeline (long-term perspective) developed, as opposed to how to develop a successful product (short-term project)?
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What is the development process for new products and services that add value to the brand as opposed to diluting the brand image?
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How are marketing launch strategies for new product and services devised?
7. Brand Management
The role of the brand manager in large organisation is becoming more demanding and sophisticated. They are now required to have a more holistic view of the business and market and act as ‘general managers' of the brand. This requires relatively junior people:
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To understand and be able to communicate in accountancy and financial terms;
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To understand the Profit & Loss account;
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To utilise payback techniques, e.g., NPV;
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To provide marginal contributions of any promotional activities;
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Communicate the value of the brand both internally and externally.
However, although the role of the brand manager is becoming more demanding in market-oriented firms it was felt that there is often a poor understanding of basic branding concepts in non-market-oriented firms.
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What, actually, is a brand? What are the symbolic, emotional and functional values, which make up a brand?
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Training is required on branding issues such as brand positioning and brand values.
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How can brand frameworks be used to provide rigour in brand building?
8. Marketing Metrics
There is a need to demonstrate marketing's contribution to the profitability of the company over the long and short-term.
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How does marketing activity contribute to shareholder value?
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How does marketing activity relate to long term effects?
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How does promotional expenditure in the short-term contribute to profitability?
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What metrics can be used adequately to reflect both marketing and organisational performance?
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How can the value and output of the new methods of marketing communications be measured?
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How can marketing metrics be better aligned to customer satisfaction?
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Consumers' information requirements. What marketing communications do consumers want to receive as opposed to how much does the organisation want to spend on communications?
9. Developing a Marketing Orientation
In technology driven or innovation-orientated firms, regardless of firm size, there is still a need to be market oriented. As the competitive environment becomes more intense and product life cycles shorten this is even more of an imperative. The key issues are:
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How can firms develop a market orientation?
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How can the marketing concept be implemented at the firm level?
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How do firms develop a market orientated culture?
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How do firms instill the need for and remove barriers to change?
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Do entrepreneurial approaches to marketing vary according to context?
10. Marketing Training and Development
Reportedly, there are still too many people operating without a basic understanding of the principles of marketing, or relevant qualifications and some practitioners argue that the marketing industry requires the same status as the accountancy profession, where people are not employed without professional qualifications.
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How can marketing practice be professionalized?
11. Corporate Social Responsibility
At the strategic level there is now a greater need for marketers to develop relationships with key stakeholders, e.g., government, food agencies, consumer groups and be ahead and shape any initiatives, e.g., the issue of food additives. The issues become:
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What is the organization's role in Corporate Social Responsibility?
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How do firms develop a sustainable Corporate Social Responsibility strategy?
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How do firms manage external stakeholder relationships?
Marketing Practice Full Report
For any further queries please contact Dr Richard Adams on r.adams@cranfield.ac.uk
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